The Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom DLC Heroes & Heralds is hitting on Dec 19th for the grand old price of nothing, Capcom has announced.

It's basically a brand new game mode that sees you choose between either Heroes or Heralds and then battle it out against the opposite faction both online and offline. The main difference is that H&H matches incorporate Ability Cards (bonus abilities like temporary invincibility or a speed boost), as well as ranking points that contribute to both your faction and your own total. At the end of the week a winner is announced.

Should you be on the victorious side you'll receive improved Ability Cards and a chance to unlock new character skins. Apparently, even if you only have time for a few battles a week, you'll still be in with a chance of unlocking new content too, which is nice. Not bad for free, eh? Check out the trailer below for more deets.

Meanwhile, Capcom has revealed that you can use a Vita as a controller for the PS3 version of UMvC3. This includes touch screen fuctionality. You can map up to four special moves to the screen and access them with just a swipe. Capcom refer to it as the "Ultimate Controller." I'm calling it the Most Expensive Controller.

I'm very interested in this new mode, especially now even more so that you can earn new skins for playing it. There's also a cool collection of artwork on the cards to be had. I think it's gonna be creative and fun to mix and match new abilities to form the "ultimate" bad @$$e$. Not that through experiment and experience I haven't already found some godly combinations. But who can beat free Capcom dlc? As rare as it already is,.. this actually sounds good. ;D